


Drowning in Stone

by Incognito_Ivory



Category: Original Work
Genre: And lose her mind with pain as you remove stone chunks from her legs, Asphyxiation, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/F, Grinding, Intense pain, Interrogation, It's persuasive!, Mild Gore, Need answers? Slowly turn your victim to stone and watch her panic!, OC whump, Sadism, Sexual Assault, Torture, detailed and loving descriptions of suffering, lots of fear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:48:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29318907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Incognito_Ivory/pseuds/Incognito_Ivory
Summary: In New York City, there were always unspoken rules to be followed. Walk fast, don't go to Times Square, and if you're desperate enough to dip a toe into organized crime, pray that you don't ever have to cross paths withher.Medusa was a scary figure in NYC's underworld. It was best to stay out of her way.Leah had thought she'd be safe. All she did was move some questionable money around as a family favor. As long as she kept her mouth shut, she'd be fine, right?Not if it was Medusa's money. Oops.---TLDR: A hapless banker gets caught up in a money laundering scheme and is put in the horrifying position of being in a certain Gorgon's interrogation chair. Loosely based on the Astoria: Fate's Kiss visual novel.
Relationships: Medusa (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 5





	Drowning in Stone

**Author's Note:**

> This is another case of "this is technically from a real source material but the characters are so intensely OOC that it might as well be an original work". I also don't want to put this in the astoria tag because I don't think they will react well to me taking a beloved character and making her a sadistic sociopath LOL.
> 
> This is totally readable as an original work.
> 
> I just want to see Medusa as a crime boss doing #JustCrimeBossThings. Like torture. :^)

Leah stares into the abyss. It is black, hazy, and unlike the proverb, has no eyes with which to stare back at her. She knows something is wrong, because this doesn't feel at all like sleep, not even the dreamless kind. Her whole body hurts, her head especially, and she feels very cold. Her last memory was... when? She pulls together enough energy to think.

...That's right, it was in the middle of the day, when she was walking home from work. She doesn't think she fell asleep when she got home, as she wasn't the type to nap in the evenings. Unless she was very sick or fainted, why would she be unconscious?

This wasn't right. She thinks harder, glaring more into the inky blackness. It doesn't give her answers, but it's something to do as she takes the time to fish out another memory.

There had been a stranger in her house, she realizes with dawning fear. Was there anything else? Was she robbed? Was she hurt?

...No, that was it, that was where her memories ended. All she can do now is wait to wake up, and deal with whatever, or whoever, is on the other side.

The abyss rewards her for her deductions and begins to pull itself apart to reveal the waking world. Something about it nonsensically reminds Leah's aching head of how she used to pull apart cotton balls when she was a kid.

The thought makes her mentally curl in on herself, now very scared of waking up. She'd do anything to be a kid again now, with the security of parents instead of being a twenty-six year old living alone and vulnerable. Or maybe her step-sister Jazzy, always tough as nails, she could beat up whoever did this to her without question. What she would give to have her here instead of an entire ocean away.

Light and sound continue to pull apart the black. There were voices now, still muffled but growing clearer. It's a sensory anchor which tugs her more quickly into full consciousness.

Leah blinks. She sees first a ceiling and the shapes of long flourescent lights. She is looking up, her head awkwardly crained back. A face hovers above her - a woman's, and she is holding something silver, which waves back and forth in front of Leah face, making her reflexively follow it with her eyes.

"Oooh, there we go! Hey Stheno, I think she's finally waking up!" The girl above her says, excitedly.

"Euryale, Keep a grip on that knife if you're gonna hold it over her face like that." Comes another female voice from out of view, deeper and calmer.

Wait - a knife?

That sinks in and tugs her out of the last of her stupor. She tenses up and blinks hard. It was cold, and she was sitting upright in a chair. No - tied to a chair, she realizes, unable to move her arms and legs. The facts make her vision clear. She sees this "Euryale" standing behind her, her face upside down. She was pretty young-looking, with platinum blond hair that curled behind her ears and wide blue eyes. She was also holding a fucking knife, inches from her forehead.

Leah startles herself fully awake, straining at her bonds in fear. "Who are you?! What the fuck are you doing?!" she gasps.

"Gooood morning, sunshine!" Euryale pipes up, voice exceptionally chipper. "We have a lot to do today so you'd better be ready!" She roughly yanks Leah's hair back to force her face closer to the knife, swinging it back and forth across her gaze.

Leah breaks into a cold sweat and looks elsewhere to try to ignore that, noting that they're in a warehouse of some sort, a kind of abandoned storage room.She wishes in that moment harder than ever that she wasn't a common-blood, that she had the ability to cast magic, a teleport spell, anything to escape. Why was she here? What would she have done-...

...Oh, no. This was about Jazzy, wasn't it?

Jazmine was her rebellious step-sister, a talented magic-blood and the polar opposite to timid, geeky Leah in every way. Jazzy hadn't handled her mom's divorce and remarriage well and left their house the second she turned 18, only a year after Leah had met her. After several years, long after Leah had graduated and held a cozy job as a banker, they had re-connected and talked again, though only once in a while. Jazmine couldn't seem to stay out of trouble and had gotten involved in crime, finding 'employment' among a gang of other magic-bloods. Leah had heavily disapproved but she had stuck her head in the sand about it and ignored the issue.

 _Damn it,_ Leah thinks as a chill runs up her spine. Was this that gang, or a rival one?

"Why am I here?" she asks.

The other woman named (or rather code-named, it seems like this gang had a Greek theme going on) Stheno, tall and darker skinned with her hair cut in a short bob, spoke up. "Because your sister skipped town, and we want to know where she is."

One day, Jazzy had contacted her and asked for a favor, to help her open a bank account out of the country so that she could live abroad. She had said she was quitting crime and trying to go straight, and she was leaving this far for her own safety. Leah had apprehensively agreed - She and Jazzy weren't especially close, but family was family and she wanted more than anything for her little sister to live a legitimate life - and that was that.

No way in hell Leah wanted to tell them any of that. She summons what little courage she has and decides to lie. "What does she have to do with any of you?"

Euryale's lip twitches and she rolls her eyes."Don't even start with that shit. You know exactly what she 'had to do'."

Leah sits up straighter and meets her eyes. "I don't!" The shake in her voice isn't on purpose, but maybe it will help sell her innocence, anyway.

The blonde doesn't seem to be buying it. She lowers her eyebrows and pokes the knife into Leah's cheek. "You know because you helped her run." She says sternly.

"I didn't do anyth-"

"-YES YOU DID!" Euryale screams into her face, grasping the back of the chair to slam it into the ground. Leah's head bounces off the floor and she gags in pain, stars popping behind her eyes. Euryale steps over her and lowers to perch on her chest, her girlish features twisted into a horrific snarl, blue eyes glowing gold as she summons her magic. "YES YOU DID," she screams again, swinging the knife above her head and threatening to bring it down in an arc of magic electricity. "YOU LYING, UGLY _WHORE-_ "

"Eur, chill the hell out." Stheno says tiredly, as if her behavior was a regular thing. Euryale's knife floats up out of her hands when Stheno steps forward with a stern look, a finger raised as her own magic - telepathy, it seems - works. Euryale's shoulders sag and she actually pouts, sticking her tongue out at her partner. Leah still has no idea how old she is and she doesn't want to ask.

Stheno clicks her tongue but gives the knife back. "We're not trying to get anything out of her. That's Medusa's job."

Leah's relief is short-lived as Euryale gleefully snatches the knife out of the air and swings it down anyway. She squeezes her eyes shut and braces herself but instead of sinking into her throat, it clangs off the floor next to her head. The sound makes her jump a mile, shaking with tension as the unstable blonde leans forward.

"You're really bad at playing dumb. Common-bloods are so stupid, literal gutter trash." Euryale hisses, scraping the tip of her knife across the floor with a disgusting grinding noise. Leah is too freaked out to be bothered by it.

Euryale finally gets off her and seems to be done... almost. She takes a moment to spit on Leah's face, then kicks her side hard enough to bruise. Leah coughs and tries to curl away but can't do much. Among the awful pain she hears laughing and glances around in alarm, realizing how it wasn't just the three of them now - there were a few more girls leaning casually against the walls, watching everything. She hadn't even heard them come in. But of course she wouldn't - they all knew magic, and teleportation or cloaking was easy.

"Medusa's here!" Stheno's authoritative voice carried through the jeering. She made a hand gesture and Leah was hauled back upright by her telekinesis. One of the girls moves behind her to check and tighten her bindings. Another steps in front of her and uses her shirt to wipe the saliva from her face and smoothes out her hair, ignoring how Leah grimaces and leans away. "Get some color in those cheeks, cutie," she says. "You gotta look nice for the boss. Maybe itll make her go easy on you."

"Yeah, right!" Someone else pipes up, laughing. Several other girls giggle at what seems to be an inside joke.

Leah wants for the ground to open up and swallow her whole. Something, anything to get her out of here.

Everybody straightens up when Medusa walks in. Some magic-bloods were so powerful that they carried a sort of aura with them, one that if potent enough could even be felt by common-bloods. Medusa's aura was so strong that it almost seemed like a physical force, like a zing of energy through the air of the entire room that had all the girls standing at attention. She was tall and lithe, sporting a well-tailored navy business suit and tie with wavy red hair grown to a bit past her shoulders. Leah would have thought she was beautiful, if she were in literally any other context.

A bunch of girls emerge out of the shadowy corners of the room to greet her, more than Leah had even noticed were there. One takes her briefcase, another drifts over and wordlessly offers to take her jacket. Medusa allows her and gives her a chaste kiss on the cheek as thanks, and the gang member blushes and giggles and then melts back into the shadow.

Leah looks more closely at the shadow. None of the girls had left the room, instead they all remained standing along the dark walls, their eyes glowing faintly. Every one of those eyes were now trained on Medusa and her like they were in the center of an amphitheater.

"Hey, Boss," Stheno says. "We got her for ya, but she's a stubborn one."

"Thank-you, Stheno. I'll take it from here." Medusa rolls up her shirtsleeves and looks gorgeously unsettling doing so. Leah's eyes follow her hands and arms, so delicate looking, and the idea that those hands might hurt her fills her with dread.

"Good evening. Leah, is it?" Medusa's voice is low and pleasant as she walks to stand in front of Leah, the heels of her leather shoes clicking against the floor. "I'm sorry you had to be put in this position, but business is business." She then crouches to be eye level, folding her hands plaintively on Leah's knee. Leah wasn't expecting the contact and she startles in her seat at the sudden closeness, her nerves already spiking. Medusa's eyes are a dark, steely gray. She is giving her an absurdly mild look, as if they were talking over dinner and not in the middle of an interrogation.

"I-..." Leah's throat was dry. "I just want to know what's going on." It's not like that wasn't the truth.

"Your sister, Jazmine, used to work for us. A few weeks ago, she disappeared, and we've been looking all over the city for her. Do you know anything about that?" Medusa reaches over to touch a lock of Leah's hair.

"No." Leah says, reflexively pulling away, but Medusa pinches the hair she's holding between her fingers and doesn't let her.

The mob boss is silent, her expression cool, as if demanding that her answer wasn't good enough. The seconds of silence stretch by and Leah grows very uncomfortable. The ball was in her court, she realizes, and if she wants to save her own skin here then she will have to do more than give one-word answers.

Damn it, what was she going to say?

A thread of wild thought occurs that maybe it would seem more realistic and believable if she inserts herself as a bystander.

Too eager to get Medusa's hands and gaze off her, she speaks without any more forethought. "No, I don't know where she went, but I do know she's gone. I've been trying to get in contact with her and she hasn't been answering, and it had me worried-"

Medusa lets her hair fall as her expression sharpens. "Interesting. We've been tracing her phone and computer and there hasn't been a single message from you."

 _Shit._ Caught in a lie, Leah's throat squeezes with anxiety. She puts all her effort into keeping her face expression neutral as the girls lurking in the shadows jeer and laugh.

Medusa's lips curl into a small smile and she stands to lean over Leah, placing both hands on her knees. "You wouldn't be lying to me," She leans closer, her hands sliding up Leah's thighs. "If you didn't have something to hide."

Her eyes then flash with light, a red glow that travels from her pupils, down her arms and out towards Leah. It runs down Leah's body and manifests in a thick, heavy feeling at her feet. Leah jerks in her bonds and looks down to see that her feet are made of stone.

"Oh my god," she mumbles, heart leaping up to her throat as she struggles in her bonds. "Wh-what what the fuck, no, please stop, st-"

Medusa shushes her with a finger to her lips. "Calm down. You'll be okay, as long as you cooperate." She leans into Leah's space. "Did you or did you not do bank-work for your sister?" Her tone of voice turns sharp and demanding, all pleasantness that had been there before gone.

Leah reacts in instinctive fear and forgets to lie. "I did!"

"What was it for?"

She flinches at her own thoughtlessness and tries to come up with an answer which dies in her throat as that awful, heavy feeling creeps higher - up her calves, then her shins, the advancing spell accompanied by the sickly crackle of stony flesh. She wasn't going to be given any time to think.

"I-... She-... She just asked me to move money to a different account."

Medusa smiles and her eyes glint. "Correct, and the money that she took, that you helped her move, was stolen from me."

 _Oh no._ Leah seizes up in genuine surprise. "What?! I didn't know that! I swear she never told me!" The pieces click together, and the whole situation makes sense. "I-I'm so sorry, I had no idea that it was yours-!"

"It's okay. I believe you." That didn't seem to matter because the stone was still moving higher, now past her knees. "But that's not why you're here." Medusa says. "You're here because we think you know where she fled to."

Leah knew now, if the tone of this situation was telling her anything, that her sister would probably die if they found her. She and Jazzy might not have been close, but the idea of having the body of a family member on her hands... Every fiber in her was screaming that she shouldn't do it. But it was that versus her self-preservation, and she had no idea what to do.

The stone moves up Leah's thighs, covering her entire lower body. She can't think hard enough to make a convincing bluff anymore. Fear and pressure make pleas spill out of her mouth as she begins to cry.

"I - I - I don't know, please, I don't know where she is," she wails. "Please stop, don't do this to me, don't kill me-!"

Medusa ignores that. Instead, she straddles Leah and lowers herself onto her lap. It was uncomfortably suggestive, which was probably the intention. The girls whoop and jeer again, their gazes feeling like nails pinning her in place.

"You know something, just because you're stone doesn't mean you can't feel." Medusa says. "Here, for example..." She traces her finger along a crack on Leah's thigh. Its light pressure tickles before she digs her nail into the crack. Leah gasps and flinches as unexpected pain lances through her leg, as if Medusa's nail were sinking into her flesh instead of stone. She had been half-expecting the stone parts of her to be numb but now knowing that they very much aren't, that her nerves are still firing at full capacity, has her in deep dread. She tries to pull away in a panic but can't move.

"Or here..." Medusa's breath fans against her cheek as her icy hands trace up Leah's thighs and push the hem of her dress up, exposing a little more leg. "I could lift this chunk clean out and it would be especially painful." She skirts her thumb and forefinger along two spidery cracks that diverge like a V, a section 4 or so inches long along the top of her thigh. "Even worse than that, I could turn you back to normal afterwards without putting this piece back. You'd be left with a big, dangerous, very open wound, and nothing to clean or staunch the bleeding with. An entire piece of yourself gone missing." She leans harder against a trembling Leah, murmuring low into her temple. "You don't want that, do you?"

Leah dimly realizes the frantic gasping for air she's hearing is coming from herself. Her brain fuzzes over as she absorbs the revolting implications of what could happen to her body. Her fingers could get snapped off, one by one. Her skull could be caved in. She could be made limbless. All of that and she'd to endure every ounce of pain and couldn't move a muscle. Could she still die or pass out if she were stone? And if the spell were reversed then she'd bleed out or get infected or... or...

 _It's only a threat, it isn't happening yet,_ she thinks, her inner voice a jumbled rush. Maybe she still has a chance to evade or lie. Maybe if she's pitiful enough, one of the girls watching them will feel bad for her and speak up. She glances around at all the cat-like eyes glued to them from around the dark corners of the room, glinting in some kind of weird sadistic glee.

 _Dumb idea,_ she admonishes herself.

If she didn't talk, then she herself would suffer a horrifying death. But if she talked, then her sister would die. This would all stop. Can she bring herself to do that? It's her sister, her _sister..._

Medusa tilts her head. "Still speechless? Think of it this way - You've involved yourself in the underworld, which now means that you're always in danger. I won't be the only one to seek you out and try to use your connections. You could tell me where she is, and I could hire a bodyguard to watch your back. When we get our money, we could even give you a portion as thanks." The gorgon smiles and lids her eyes, for a second Leah swears she sees her pupils slit.

Her following words are more deliberate, almost seductive in their delivery. "A stipend and protection," The hand at Leah's cheek then presses over her mouth. She goes rigid and moans in dread, trying to twist away as Medusa's other hand digs a thumbnail under that big crack on her thigh. "So that nobody else could find you... and hurt you."

Searing agony shoots through her as Medusa starts to lift the piece out of her leg. Leah jerks, screaming into Medusa's hand and thrashing in her bonds as the instinct to get away seizes her. Her movements dislodge a further portion of the chunk free, several inches deeper than it was at the edges. The pain gets much worse, becomes less like skin-deep fire and more like a horrible force grinding its way up her spinal cord. She gives a spasm and her head lolls back, eyes huge and blank.

Medusa lets the chunk of stone fall back into place and the pain disappears as if it was never there. Leah goes slack and wheezes in air, reeling from the intensity of what she just felt. The hand on her mouth lets go and brushes the tears from her cheeks with a sickening gentleness. She hadn't even known she was crying.

"It hurts, doesn't it?" says Medusa, after giving Leah a few seconds to attempt to collect herself. "All you have to do is tell me where your sister is, and all this-" She then roughly grips at Leah's thighs and digs her fingers in hard, twisting them. "-can stop."

The stone splinters and crumbles, a few pieces of it dislodging and raining onto the floor. The sound was drowned out by Leah's screams and cries. The pain was absolute, almost blinding, shoving its way deep into her nerves and locking tight around her head, not letting her have a single coherent thought.

After seconds that feel like hours her tormentor lets go. Her magic sparks as she smooths her hands along Leah's ruined legs. All the chunks of stone jump up and knit themselves back into their proper places, again making the pain fade as fast as it came.

It was all too much. Leah slumps sideways and vomits onto the floor.

Medusa sighs and pulls a handkerchief out of her pants pocket. "Are you going to talk, now?" she says softly as she sits Leah back upright and wipes her mouth and nose clean.

Leah feels like a noodle, all the strength gone from her. She can only sit limp, face white as a sheet and eyes half rolled back. She opens her mouth and after a few false starts she forces out a couple of words, the action feeling like it takes enormous amounts of energy.

"Please... stop... please..."

Medusa makes a disapproving hum, like somebody about to scold a pet. "Her location, Leah."

Her location. Her sister's location. If she says anything, her baby sister is dead. She can't. She can't. _She can't-_

"I... I can't."

The corner of Medusa's mouth pulls in a leer. "Hm, that's just too bad."

The red aura glows again and The cold, dreadful stone creeps higher, past the banker's hips, starting up her abdomen. Leah makes a long, fearful sound and squeezes her eyes shut, shaking her head. She can't do this. She can't take any more. She struggles by reflex but can barely even move as the advancing stone of her stays stock still.

It stops below her rib cage.

Medusa moves to still the rest of her, sitting higher on her lap to pin her upper body against the back of the chair. The moment feels like it happens in slow motion. Leah looks up at her and takes in several details she had missed while in pain. Medusa's cool composure was slipping. A blush dusts her cheeks and her mauve lipstick from before is gone, left in stains on her teeth from biting her lip. She is restless, fidgeting a little in her lap. Her fingers are twitchy as her hands slide along Leah's waist then move up, squishing into her breasts for a second, to her shoulders, neck, then into her hair.

Leah realizes.

 _'Oh,'_ she wearily thinks as her hair is pulled to tilt her head back. _'I get it, now._ ' She thinks as Medusa pushes her whole body harder against her, all the way flush, until she can feel her tormentor's excited heartbeat skipping against her collarbone, until she can feel a blissful, open-mouthed sigh against her temple.

The torture wasn't _just_ about getting her to talk. Of course it wasn't.

An uncomfortable, new breed of panic bubbles up as Medusa rolls her hips and grinds her crotch down onto Leah's thigh. Around them, the girls watching wolf-whistle and cheer, as if they were all eager voyeurs at an adult show.

She has no idea what to do.

"I think I've given you enough time to rest. Let's keep going." Medusa says, eyes bright, voice heady.

"No, no no no," Leah begins to hyperventilate. "I can't, _I can't-!_ "

Medusa covers her mouth. "Don't panic. Take deep breaths, you're going to need them." She smiles then grins wide, the most emotion she had shown so far. Her teeth were perfect and straight, canines sharper than they should have been. She blinks slowly, her gaze ensnaring. Leah wasn't imagining it this time - her pupils _were_ slit, so thin that they were practically vertical lines.

She was staring into the abyss, and the abyss was not black, but gray.

The stone keeps going, and it gets harder and harder to breathe. A sickening weight forms at the bottom of her lungs and grows upwards, like there was something settling inside them. She jerks and inhales with all her might, and pain stabs her as a disgusting crack resonates from inside her body.

Medusa is turning her lungs to stone, slowly, deliberately, waiting for her to break.

Leah struggles the parts of her that can still move, making short, terrified sounds. She has to clamp down on the urge to scream because she needs to conserve air. Medusa slots her palms around Leah's waist and squeezes roughly. It pulls a wail out of her that she has to gasp to recover from, to return oxygen to her starving brain, but it's not enough.

Hypoxia begins to grip her. She can't think properly and spots dance in front of her vision. She tries to inhale as deep as she can again, what flesh is left of her lungs and diaphragm pulling hard enough to put the encroaching stone under stress. Something in her moves _wrong_ before it crumbles and dislodges. Liquid fills her mouth - it's blood, she's bleeding - and all she can do is weakly turn her head and spit it out. She coughs and little bits of rock scrape their way up her trachea, and she spits those out, too. She doesn't have the capacity to think about whats happening inside her. All she can do is keep rattling in air despite the damage that's causing, every instinct rendering her desperately clinging to life.

Medusa loops her arms around Leah's neck as if this all was romantic, as if she wasn't killing her, panting in her ear as she shamelessly grinds down against her, fueling her lust with her pain. She drills her fingers into Leah's side and crumbles handfuls out of her waist. Agony grinds its way across Leah's raw, frayed nerves, all the way to her overloaded head. She shudders and ekes out an airy sob. On her, Medusa snarls out a curse and grabs her head to crash their lips together, squirming and gasping femininely against her bloody mouth as she climaxes.

All Leah can do is be limp and let her. She doesn't have the strength to be disgusted. She's gonna die, anyway. What did it matter?

Medusa comes down from her high, relaxing her grip to touch their foreheads together. "Where is she?" She whispers, in this loving, sweet tone that's grossly in-congruent with what's happening. "All you have to do is sing for me, little bird."

Leah remembers with a start why she was dying, and what she has to say to make it stop. Every shred of logic, every ounce of trepidation and feeling breaks apart within her and leaves her thoughtless, with only a pure, carnal need for survival. Making the pain stop. Staying alive. Nothing else matters. She manages to speak:

"T-t-tai... wa- ahn-"

"Taiwan?" Medusa clarifies. To Leah's somehow still mounting panic, she makes the stone crackle all the way up to her neck, coiling around her trachea like a snake. The gorgon now had a grip that prevented her from moving at all. Her voice was low and icy, filled with the threat of death. "Is that the truth?"

Leah doesn't answer at first because her senses are too blanketed in hypoxia. Her hearing echoes, her vision is a smeary blur. She has freezing chills all over. Her heart fumbles several beats between its desperate slamming against her rib cage and goes into arrhythmia as the stone forces parts of it to still. As telltale pain squeezes in her chest and numbness jitters down her right arm and leg, she realizes that she's seconds away from death. It's enough to jolt one last bit of clarity through her mind, enough for her to gather the faculties to answer before she literally has a heart attack.

 _'YES,'_ She thinks as loud as she can, willing her mouth to move as hard as she can. _'YES YES YES ITS THE TRUTH ITS THE TRUTH ITS THE-'_

"Y-...yeh…-!!" She does it, barely. She can't close her jaw for the 's' sound. Did she get through? Was it enough?

Was it... enough?

was... it...

As Leah's soul slips off the ledge, a red flash runs through the chasm beneath her before she can tumble in. Just like that, the stone crushing her to death vanishes, and everything heals at once. It's not a good feeling, being artificially yanked from 1 to 100 like that. All of her body had been working overtime to survive and the sudden flood of normal makes her system destabilize as it fails to adjust fast enough. She begins foaming at the mouth and seizing but her brain manages to slam on the brakes before more damage is done and she tips into unconsciousness instead, safe enough to live.

"Good girl. That wasn't so hard, was it?"

\---

They had told her she'd had a seizure that evening while on public transport and that someone had brought her here, to the hospital.

Leah, with no memory at all of what happened, had protested weakly, saying that she didn't even have epilepsy, that she’s never had seizures before in her life. But she really had no choice but to stay. She was tired and in pain, the muscle-deep, exhausting kind that belied ill health, so maybe that really was what happened. A seizure, how scary. At least she was okay now, and at least she could rest. That her health insurance covered this visit was also a big help.

She could accept the seizure explanation, but now all she wanted to know was who exactly had brought her here. She had asked the nurse, who immediately got red-faced and shifty-eyed, stuttering out a "We don't know, sorry." An obvious lie.

Leah didn't press her further, being too tired to care about it this much.

...Or maybe not.

Leah was now tossing and turning in her hospital bed, finding no warmth or comfort in the mattress and sheets, not liking the sterile smell or washed-out colors, all doused in indistinguishable greys by the dim lights of night-time. She was deathly tired but couldn't sleep, turning around the big gap in her memory over and over in her head. She was on her way home from work, then what? She could have sworn she had already been walking to her house, so what was with the story that she had seized on the train home...? A question with no answer.

Among her wandering, restless thoughts, for some reason she finds herself thinking about Jazzy. Maybe she just feels alone in this hospital and wants to talk to someone.

She wearily moves her saline I.V. line out of the way to feel for her phone on the bedside table, opening her messages and remembering the last conversation she had with Jazzy, before she left the country. Her sister had specifically asked her to not contact her until she was able to text her first from a new number.

Leah pauses before sighing and locking her phone. Oddly, she is worried about not herself, but her sister. But why? Jazzy can take care of herself.

She was fine. Jazzy was fine.

Leah tries hard to ignore the mysterious doubt that prickles at her skin, turning over and pulling the covers over her head as she does her best to fall asleep.


End file.
